THEATER REVIEW

THEATER REVIEW; Beguiled By the Past

By BEN BRANTLEY

Published: May 8, 1998

MILLBURN, N.J.—
''I should have gone to an acting school, that seems clear,'' sings Ann Miller, without a flicker of apologetic cuteness, in the thrilling new revival of Stephen Sondheim's 1971 musical ''Follies'' at the Paper Mill Playhouse. ''Still, someone said, 'She's sincere,' so I'm here.''

The fact of the matter is, Ms. Miller is sincere -- heartbreakingly, splendidly so -- when she performs ''I'm Still Here,'' the great anthem to survival in show business, and so is the production that features her to such revelatory advantage. Actresses from Yvonne De Carlo to Nancy Walker to Carol Burnett have performed the role of Carlotta Campion, who like Ms. Miller is a movie star well past her heyday, in various incarnations of ''Follies'' and in styles that tended to be heavy on both the grit and the irony.

But surely no one has ever gone so directly to the wounded, wondering core of the song as Ms. Miller does. Working her way through a chain of some of Mr. Sondheim's most inspired rhymes, describing the ''good times and bum times'' of a life on stage and before the cameras, this actress resists the considerable temptations to succumb to surface cleverness and swaggering self-parody.

She could get away with doing just that, of course, given her own iconic status as the peppy, raven-haired tap dancer with the keyboard smile in MGM movie musicals. Instead, she addresses the audience, in a weathered trumpet of a voice, with the considered earnestness of a woman in a confessional. ''Lord knows at least I've been there,'' sings Carlotta and boy, do you believe her. By the time Ms. Miller intones the famous lines, ''First you're another sloe-eyed vamp, then someone's mother, then you're camp,'' there's no way you're going to look at Ann Miller, now in her 70's, as a camp artifact. Ms. Miller's solo takes up about five minutes, and she's rarely center stage otherwise. But she is the very essence of this emotionally rich, exquisite-looking production, which has been lovingly and precisely directed by Robert Johanson, with matching choreography by Jerry Mitchell. Ms. Miller may get teary-eyed during her song (certainly, you will), but her vision isn't blurred by false sentiment. Her Carlotta is a woman who has made a truce with where and what she has been. She can speak directly to who she was.

This is what Mr. Sondheim's show is about learning to do, on both an individual and a collective level. The process of looking for light in the shadows of a shared past has obviously struck responsive chords in this production's carefully cast ensemble, led by Laurence Guittard, Dee Hoty, Tony Roberts and, in the performance of her career, Donna McKechnie. Rounded out by invigorating cameo turns by such stalwarts as Eddie Bracken, Kaye Ballard and Phyllis Newman, the show throbs with raw feelings that are never diluted by the stylized forms they assume.

When ''Follies'' first opened on Broadway, in a stunning, innovative production by Harold Prince and Michael Bennett, it gave many critics the chills. Centered around a reunion of veterans of a Ziegfeld Follies-type revue, and set in a decaying New York show palace about to be razed, it is indeed a sort of ghost story. The aging stars and chorines who populate the show, performing in long-outmoded styles, are unsettlingly reflected by actors of idealized beauty playing their younger selves.

Many of the older performers in the original version, who included Alexis Smith and Dorothy Collins in the female leads and warhorses like Ethel Shutta and Fifi D'Orsay in supporting roles, brought with them a nostalgic perfume of associations. Some reviewers saw this as exploitative to the point of cruelty and spoke of an element of easy satire in the score's period pastiche songs. Accusations were leveled that have followed Mr. Sondheim ever since: he was too clever, too intellectual, too unfeeling.

This is nonsense. It was then, and it is even more clearly in this incarnation of the show, the first fully staged production in the New York area since its original run. ''Follies,'' which has a book by James Goldman that was never its strong point but is much improved here, is saturated with affection for the musical era it addresses.

It's not about sending up a genre's history, the way winking revivals of shows like ''No, No, Nanette'' and ''Irene'' were doing around the time ''Follies'' first opened. It's about learning to live with that history, about finding a form that can embrace it. And in paralleling the waning of a show-business tradition with the eroding marriages of the two middle-aged couples at the musical's center, ''Follies'' makes stirring points about the intersection of private lives and cultural landscapes.

Start with the score. It may evoke the vintage tunefulness of composers like Kern, Porter and Friml, but it also shades them with disquieting dissonance, given authoritative life by the orchestrations of Jonathan Tunick, who did the original. It comes to reflect the experience of listening to music you knew in your youth, in which the knowledge of what has happened to you since then somehow subverts the melody in your mind.